How to Design a Stylish Event Flyer

Despite living in a world that’s growing progressively more digital, printed event flyers are still a surprisingly common project to find on a designer’s desk or within their inbox. These flyers are often for parties, Q&A sessions, fundraisers, conferences, film screenings, and other events. In fact, just last week I was asked to design a flyer for a film festival. Believe me when I say that this is far from a complaint; it just goes to show you that – despite the advent of smartphones, the prevalence of tablets, and the meteoric growth of social networking websites – print promotion is still very much in demand. Print advertising is still a big thing, and learning how to create good advertisements via posters and flyers is still very useful design skill to have. There are thousands of ways to design a flyer. Depending on the nature of the event, you may need your design to be a bit more stylish compared to something more bland and boring. Ladies and gents, power up your Photoshop, because today we are creating a simple but eye-catching flyer using only text, texture, and of course, some Photoshop filters. Here’s a peek ahead at our finished flyer:

Step 1: Canvas

Creating a new document within Photoshop, change your dimensions to match the settings in the image below.

Step 2: Texture

Go to this website and download the grunge paper texture provided by Bashcorpo. Copy the image and paste it onto your canvas. You will need to resize the image by pressing Ctrl + “T” and scaling it so that it fills the entire whitespace. Don’t forget to press Enter when you are done scaling your image so that the changes can take effect.

Step 3: Erasing

Once you have your texture in place, go to your brushes and select a brush that will give you some cool edges when you erase. For example, I used some splatter brushes. If you don’t have splatter brushes, you can either download some or use some other unorthodox brush. As long as it’s not a standard circle brush, it will serve our purposes well.

Step 4: Color

Create a new layer, fill it in with #348ee1, and change the layer mode to Color Burn. You should now have a pretty blue color.

Step 5: Lines

Step 6: Warping and Layer Modes

If you created your vertical colors in separate layers, you will need to merge them. If you created them in one layer, you can go ahead and start warping the image by going to “Edit” > “Transform” > “Warp.” Feel free to get creative; you don’t have to replicate the same bend that I did; just make sure the final image touches the corners.

When everything is to your liking, go to the layer mode and change it to Subtract, so that you have nice, rustic colors on your blue background.

Step 7: Circles and Splatters

Under a new layer, create a giant white circle in the upper corner of your overlapping the rustic bar of color. Using splatter or drip brushes, simply add white drops towards the bottom of the circle until you get something close to the image below. Once again, if you don’t have splatter or drop brushes, any textured brush that adds drips, scratches or marks will do.

Step 8: Selecting and Deleting

Using the magic wand, click the newly created dripping circle, then select the rustic bar layer and press Delete. Once this is done, hide the layer with your white dripping circle so that you have a cut out of where the image used to be. This is where we are going to put the date of the event.

Step 9: White Box

Create two white boxes using the Marquee Tool, making the smallest box on top. This is where we are going to put the name of the venue presenting the event. Try to get your box as centered as possible. As you can see, I am beginning to add some stroke options around the elements of my designs; this will help it stand out from the background.

Step 10: Adding Text

With the color #880f00, I typed my text and centered it in the middle of my white boxes. In order to get the desired effect, I used the Blending Options and selected the Drop Shadow and the Stroke options. The font that I used is called Poplar Std for those who want to know.

Step 11: Finishing Text

Finish adding in the rest of the text for the event, making sure to utilize the remaining space. Try using two vastly different colors to create a nice contrast; I used maroon and white for mine.

Step 12: Logo

If your event has sponsors, make sure to add their logo to the flyer, as it is a great habit to get into for print advertisements. In general, you’ll want to add your sponsors at the bottom of the flyer so that they don’t distract viewers from the pertinent information. After you are all done with your flyer, the only thing left to do is get your design printed and distributed.

Conclusion

Depending on your event, the design I created in this particular tutorial may not suit your needs. In order to figure out what type of flyer would best benefit your event, take in consideration the venue and the target audience. For more business type events, keep it simple and try to use only text and perhaps some gradients. Flyers for more informal things like can include use stock images, textures, gradients, and glowing elements to make them stand out. Here are a couple of examples of flyers I’ve done for several different events, just to show you a wide variety of flyer designs.

I hope you enjoyed it!

Do you get frequent requests for flyer design? Do you have any designs of your own to show off? Do you find yourself doing more or less print work compared to the past?

Gabrielle is a creative type who works as a freelance graphic designer, animator, photographer and filmmaker. She has worked doing various jobs from designing logos to filming commercials and animating music videos for both domestic and international music artists.